


We're Just Like Two Aging Truckers Down The Road

by anglheadedhpstr



Series: Roots and Wings [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 21:16:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anglheadedhpstr/pseuds/anglheadedhpstr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Will I be there? When all the stories fade and I am out of breath? My yoke is, your yoke is, resting on our shoulders and we share the weary load.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bruce Banner has a thief problem, but that's not really the point of anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're Just Like Two Aging Truckers Down The Road

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, Pippin is here. I feel like we should make a "PIPPIN IS OUR FAVORITE" banner or something. Anyways, here's this.
> 
> Lyrics and title are from my favorite band, a song called [Two Aging Truckers](http://youtu.be/f0sTBoM8mOA).

She crept up on him sometimes…like when the sun starts to show itself by the beginnings of dawn long before it actually rises above the horizon.

It’s not a metaphor he’s apt to use a lot but…

It works.

It works because Bruce always knows she’s there, she’s his Pippin after all.

From the age of three her fingers, constantly sticky in that way only pudgy little digits could be, were always swiping something from right under Bruce’s nose.  The only warning he ever got was the giggle and mischievous grin Tony gave her (and _fuck him_ for that, because everyone knew Bruce never held up under that one) as she stuffed the food in her mouth, or drew with the pens on precious notes, or ran to half fixed robot parts with tools.  And yeah, that would have been okay if it weren’t for the fact that she only did this in the lab, and Bruce was _working_ , and it was absolutely impossible for him to look away from Pippin, all of thirty pounds and stomping holes into the earth as wide as her father’s if her successful smile and tiny _whoop_ was any indication.

 

(And it’s times like these when Bruce thinks very hard about the day he found out, the day they all found out, that Tony and Pepper were going to be parents.  There was obviously a shout of congratulations amongst most but Bruce felt himself so drawn to them for the rest of the night.  He couldn’t keep his hands off them, off of the truly precious beings that were helping to create what is going to be the best thing in existence.

And Bruce doesn’t need anyone to tell him that most people find it weird that by the end of the night he’s cuddled in bed with the both of them, arms wrapped securely around those things most precious.  It’s the contented rumbling of the Older Guy inside him that he falls asleep to.)

 

Usually when Pippin stole something from under his nose he didn’t even try to pretend to continue work.  He finally admitted it when she was five.  He was her last stop, the one she always depended on.  And it would probably hurt to know that. To know that Pippin has gone to every other person in this Tower but it doesn’t because he feels some satisfaction in that.

He likes that Pippin knows she can come to him any time and that they get to prove it with this ritual of theirs.

Anyways, it’s because not even Pippin can steal Tony away from work when he’s into it, (and he meant it, as in _horrible things will happen to anyone who tries to take this wrench from me so help me God, Pepper_ ) and all of Pippin’s convincing tactics were taken directly from her father and the first thing he taught her was when to call it quits.

 

(It should be noted that the only rule on that list was “Only call it quits when your adversary is another Stark.”)

 

So, this time, the boredom became too much, Clint’s hide and seek is monotonous, Steve’s pictures are getting boring, Natasha and Pepper are off somewhere “doing lunch” whish to everyone else meant “plotting our overthrowing of every third world country in this hemisphere” and Pippin’s little body is shaking because she can’t take it.  She’s a tangled mess, from her wild red hair to her arms standing akimbo.  She had bypassed her father (why even try when all he would do was _“Life changing inventions, Pip, baby, look-”_ ) because she knew by now not to try and went straight to Bruce.

Like she always did.

“I was using that.” Stern eyes over a small, pleased smile, and one eyebrow raised.  Penless hand still poised over his notes.

“I need your help making my robot sing.” And with that she’d turn around and begin walking to the elevators knowing he’d follow.  She had his favorite pen, after all.  Starks, Clint would always remark with something like amusement with of a hint of danger and if Bruce wasn’t mistaken a little bit of jealousy, would always know to take prisoners.

 

(And it’s not just that he’s following Pippin around because he was there for her ultrasound pictures, or because he felt her before she was born or that he regularly shares a bed with Tony and Pepper.  It’s not him buying into some secret fantasy where he actually has a normal life.

None of this is normal because half of the occupants in this house regularly kick the ass out of the bad guys.

And quite honestly, none of the important people think it because they were there the first time Bruce held Pippin in his hands.  They saw the way his hands shook and then steadied, the way that holding her sucked everything bad from his body.  Pippin likes to say Bruce is hers, but Bruce isn’t sure if she’s aware that he claimed her first.)

  


Bruce will never inform you of the exact date that he went from equating Pippin’s random kidnappings from “I’m bored save me” to “Hey, Uncle Bruce, we need to talk.” (which, by the way… _Uncle Bruce_.)  But it hit him one day and it was something that left him stupefied.  Like he always said.  She snuck up on you.

She’s all of thirteen now, trim legs crossed at the ankles as bare feet with Iron Man Red (some guy somewhere designed the color for her and it is, next to Hulk Green, her favorite) toenails swing beneath the desk.  She’s waiting for him as he walks from the back room, old notes in his hand and she grins when she sees him.

Bruce stops short.

He’s used to the sight of Pip grinning.  She and her father always are.  It’s like their armor outside of any metal, the most biting protection that a Stark can make with flesh and without any form of technology.  Next to the amazing verbal quips, the Stark grin is the first thing they learn for survival.  It’s the grin that is one part ego, two parts _Hello, I’m a Stark_ , and seven parts _I will eat you for breakfast and spit you back out so you can walk home_.  Even Pepper has one now. (and as an aside: Bruce doesn’t think that’s fair.  She gets her eyebrow thing and a grin.  And yes, he’s aware of how crazy that sounds.)

So it’s not the sight of Pippin grinning that bothers him.  It’s that she’s grinning that way at him.  (And Bruce can’t think about what he did.  Because if he had actually done anything he could remember he wouldn’t be here right now he would be somewhere far far away where eventually he’s sure he could kill himself.)  But none of that changes the fact that he is metaphorically shaking in his boots because he knows that particular tilt of lips and he knows it because he’s seen it on Tony’s face before every battle.

“What’s wrong, Pip?”  He places the notes on the table, next to her tapping fingers, and his hand rests on her hair.  He sees the slight tightening in her eyes and he knows about her and her hair but it doesn’t change anything.  He can’t stop himself from doing this, from trying to hold onto her in some way.

“What do ya mean, Brucie?” Her grin gets a harder edge as she slaps the hand away, crossing her arms around herself.  Bruce looks up and around him, finding these similar surroundings to be alien in this moment.  He feels so out of his depth.  Every time he’s seen Pip do this it’s in her mother’s office, or sitting on one of her father’s cars, and maybe it’s been with Steve once, but Bruce has never had Pippin sit in front of him and be so obviously _Stark Don’t Touch_ about it that he’s floundering.

“Pippin-” he chokes it out, watching her demeanor crack under the pressure.  It’s this that shows Bruce something to true and genuine and special that he can’t hold in his emotions and he settles his arm around his shoulders.  Bruce doesn’t see Pippin’s Stark Battle Armor for the same reason he doesn’t see Tony’s off the battlefield any more.  Trust.

She curls her feet up onto the desk, settling her thin chin between her knees as she picks at the polish on her nails.

“I saw some footage of the Avengers in school today.”  Bruce shuts his eyes, squeezes his arm around her and settles his chin on top of her hair.  He’s not sure if he could look into her eyes right now if he wanted to.

“I mean, it’s not like you guys don’t all tell me what you do and I haven’t seen any of the new stuff on the news but-” she stops, her hands stilling and wrapping themselves around her ankles.  She’s now locked into her own circle of protection.  “But this was the older stuff...there were parts of it from New York and…”

(He remembers what New York was like.  A vague sense of anger and throwing things and fire exploding around him and catching something so delicate but strong as it falls to the Earth.)

In the years since that first battle, he and the others have been much better at working as a team.  They’re better at looking out for each other, for themselves.  Now that they have years, and children, and memories between them they do what they need to do to get home safely and they trust each other to keep it that way.  But to Pippin, instead of looking at that as a stepping stone to what her parents are at now, she see’s red and gold lifeless metal falling to the ground with her father inside, her precious Steve flying through windows and onto damaged cars, her Natasha, her Clint, and her Bruce fighting battles and nearly dying.

That’s what she sees, and it terrifies her.  There isn’t much that can bother a Stark except for losing what is theirs and that’s what every Avenger is to Pippin in some ways.

“I’m so sorry Pip.” Bruce whispers against her hair. “But you know it’s not like that anymore, right?”

Her head turns and her eyes look straight into his.  “That’s just the thing…” she plays with her face, her puckered lips tilting to the side, and her eyes catching his.  Even though they’re Pepper’s color, every emotion and play they do are Tony’s and Bruce knows those eyes so well.  “I...I’m scared but. I’m not necessarily scared of them dying only, you know?”

She reaches out and grabs his hand her small fingers tapping a rhythm onto his palm.

“I saw Dad go up there...I saw him falling...but I also...saw you.”  She extends her fingers and grasps his own.  “You...the Other Guy...whatever. I saw you catch him.”

And suddenly, Bruce reaches that final point of clarity that renders him motionless and it’s that only waking moment where he can feel _him_. Feel him stirring in his subconscious, but not ready to come alive, no, not yet.  But he’s there and he’s satisfied, and he rumbles in his contentedness and Bruce never feels more alive than in moments like this.

She wasn’t terrified for them, or of them.  Only one thing terrifies a Stark more than loss, and it’s an apology.

“Thanks, Uncle Bruce.”  

Then Pippin uncurls herself from his desk, hops off and walks out of the lab, hands stuck in her jean pockets and ginger hair swaying as she does.

It takes Bruce five minutes to realize that she didn’t steal anything from his desk.  His hand reaches up and covers his chest, and feels the proud beating of his heart.

But she did steal something, didn’t she?

 

(That night Bruce stays with Tony - Pepper’s at some thing in D.C. that involves lots of paperwork, coffee, and expensive dresses - and when they are curled together in the dark Bruce tells Tony all of it.

Tony smiles and runs his hand through Bruce’s hair, shrugging.

“I don’t see why this surprises you.  You just went from "Bruce the Almighty Person Who is Mine" to "Bruce the Almighty Person who is Mine and Saved My Father".  It’s not really that big of a difference.  You’re just even more special to her now than you used to be.”

Bruce doesn’t know what he’s hearing, because Tony is being emotionally smart for once and also he’s looking at him like that and  Bruce thinks he’s missed something -

“You are her Dad too Bruce.”

Oh.

That.

There are years that Bruce will spend remembering that moment.)

 

As the years go on, Pippin Stark’s thefts happen few and far between.  As she’s growing into her  own person, her own inventor, and eventually running to the halls that taught her father in Massachusetts, she seems to need less of anyone but herself.  And Bruce should be happy about this and he is. He’s so proud of that girl with the long gait, her father’s old band t-shirts stuck in the middle of her mother’s hand me down pant suits.

But he’s really kidding himself if he says he isn’t sad.  Because when she’s running around MIT, all he can think of is her tiny body cross legged on his desk.  Or when she was the tallest of the bunch at nine years old, her upper body right next to her dad’s under some engine while all four of their feet move to the music.

Or her hand in his as she thanks him for things he never had to think to do.

She’s growing up in front of him and he’s terrified of what this means. Terrified of the fact that she, understandably, is drop dead gorgeous and is so like her father he has to restrain the other guy from killing every hot blooded male in MIT.  Terrified of the fact that her plans don’t include an apartment in the tower, but a pre-picked and modeled high rise apartment out by her dad’s old Malibu mansion.  Or, even worse, the fact that her detailed plans for her future also include hidden blueprints of armor, gold, red, fierce, protective and so fucking ingenious that he can’t breathe.  (She might be a breakthrough expert in physics, but no one could deny she still had the Stark flair.)

She found him looking at them a couple weeks before she left for college, her dad’s old MIT sweater wrapping itself around her and her bare feet (Captain America Blue, with _“sparkles Steve! This shit is hilarious!”_ ) padding along the workroom floor and Bruce feels so much confusion.  Mainly, because she doesn’t look confused, or worried, or sheepish.  The look on her face is so resigned that he once again feels flashbacks to those stolen moment back when the Avengers was so fresh, and Tony Stark and Bruce Banner were still nothing but separate soldiers, and _Oh, God...what is this_?

“JARVISis hiding them for right now…” she says, her hands flicking across the screen, folding down unfinished plans and showing parts, segments, that will make up a deadly but accurate whole.  “He seems to agree with me that I shouldn’t be home when Dad finds out…” she looks over to Bruce, her hands folded on her hips and determination across her face.

“But, I mean, isn’t this awesome, Uncle Bruce?  My first suit I was able to design at least four of Dad’s first line of suits into one. I mean, this one here? Space, underwater, and Hulk proof.”  She turns to look at him. “You know, just in case he wants to give me a hug someday.”

“Pippin-” panic is rising in his throat and he puts his shaking hands against his legs, rubbing them until he can feel each individual thread woven there, until he doesn’t feel like his body is going to fall apart at any minute.  “Pippin, you can’t.”

Her gaze is hard, but underneath it her voice reminds him of that day when she was seven years old, stole his pen and in such small words reminded him that “no, you couldn’t put those two chemicals together to help out whatever and seriously Uncle Bruce, I need some hot chocolate.”

“You can’t tell me I can’t.  You can only tell me when Dad finds out.”

And suddenly Bruce sees. He knows how this happened, that him accidentally stumbling onto her secret file of armor designs wasn’t an accident but purposeful, and something Colonel Rhodes once told him about Starks and surprises is picking at the back of his brain but he’s still sitting her stunned.  Because if it wasn’t for the perfection of these designs, it would be Pippin’s demeanor that made her well and truly Stark right now and _goddamit Tony_.  What else would Pippin have turned into?

So when it’s three months later, and instead of a small giggle or an eye roll, it’s stomping feet and a strong yank that tears his pen away from his hand and shoves his chair around, Bruce sighs as he looks into the furious eyes of Pippin’s other father.

He doesn’t ask how he knows Bruce already knew.  He doesn’t ask how he found them, he just looks solidly over his glasses and stares the furious man down.

“Tony, she _is_ your daughter.”

And that, really, is all he needs to say.

 

(Bruce eventually agrees with Pepper but it takes a while.  That night, as they cuddle on the couch while Tony took out his very large anger out on something metal in the lab, Pepper turns in his arms and rests her forehead against his.

“I don’t think Tony knew what it was like to be in our shoes before now.”  She has that soft, sad smile on.  That one she’s had every time Tony hurts but it’s something that’ll be good for him so they both have to sit here and let him deal with it for a while.

Bruce pecks her nose.  “I don’t even think we’ve even been in these shoes before now.  Pepper she’s…” Bruce stops when Pepper’s hands pats him lightly on the cheek.

“She’s going to save the world.  Just like she saved you two.”)

 

Three years later and no one else knows about Pippin’s little secret.  Where whenever she finishes something, the finished design makes it’s way into Bruce’s email account where he plays over it with a fine toothed comb, and he’s sure Tony is doing the same thing in another room, but they never talk about it.

They bury these emails dark into their memories, and don’t talk to her about it, not after that one time where only Bruce was present and Pippin and Tony’s yells had to be blocked out by loud music and loud machine noises DUM-E was more than happy to provide.

Until, one day, it’s not just a question of if’s anymore.  And when Tony’s sensor light goes dark on the screen in the hellicarrier, and Fury is keeping Clint and Steve from suiting up and going out there when they all know they don’t stand a chance as much as Tony obviously did, and then suddenly there’s this unknown thing appearing on radar and when scans show a blur of red and gold and everyone stands still as comprehension and disbelief crosses their features before everyone in the room turns to stare at Bruce.

His reply is choked, but with the way everyone’s expression relaxes, tenses, or softens he knows it was right.

“She’s a Stark.  And that’s her Dad.”

And it’s the same expressions they wear when two armors land on the pad, and face masks pull up to reveal two very identical grins and voices that are talking way too fast for comprehension, and Tony is jumping like a chihuahua and Pippin can’t keep her arms still.  It’s the same expressions they wear when the high finally wears off and Tony is mad in the “oh my _God_ you are never allowed in my work shop again” way and Pippin watches him with resigned amusement as they take him to the med bay to fix up the bruises and knicks he didn’t feel when the adrenaline was there.

Bruce walks up to her hours later, putting a hand on her shoulder as she stares at her father’s armor, now standing proudly in it’s place and he can only imagine what she’s thinking.

“You saved him. Thank you.”

Pippin’s smile is small and her hands pull themselves around her arms.  She turns her face towards him and nods.  She knows what that means.  What loving Tony Stark in any form makes you do and she’ll take acknowledgement of that anywhere.

And then her grin is rambunctious and sly, and she nods her head to the empty space next to her father’s armor.

“So...I was thinking _Iron Sides_.”

 

(As much as he knowingly thinks about her, though, it’s every moment of his existence that he thinks of that conversation he’d had with Pepper and Tony, all three of them cuddled between sheets and blankets and they spoke of what they wanted their child to truly be.

Bruce is very glad she excelled all their expectations.)

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked, please comment and let's talk about stuff!


End file.
